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Calum and Dean walked along King’s Parade as if they owned it, which, to some degree, they did. There were bouncers on all the doors to the numerous bars and nightclubs; surly, brutish types in monkey suits, with gap-toothed grins and dented noses. But if Calum and Dean wanted admission, there was only a small handful who’d say ‘no’. Most of the doormen, if they weren’t involved with them professionally, knew about them by reputation, sufficiently enough to know that serious trouble was easy enough to come by in Bradburn without inviting it.
Not that, in a normal time and place, Calum and Dean were even close to being adequately attired to gain entry to any nightspot which held itself in reasonable regard.
The former, who was heavyset – more than was good for a guy in his early/mid-twenties – wore only a pair of grey shell-pants and grey and orange Nike training shoes. He’d removed his ragged pink sweater and now wore it draped across his shoulders, exposing acres of flabby, pallid flesh, particularly around the midriff, not to mention the usual plethora of tasteless tattoos. Whether he felt the evening chill was unclear. In all probability, thanks to his system being overloaded with drugs and drink, he probably didn’t think that he did, though if his body-odour permitted you to get close enough to appraise him in detail, you’d note that the small, pink nipples on his sagging man-boobs stood stiffly to attention.
Dean was no less dressed-down for the occasion. In his case it was blue and blood-red Nikes and emerald green tracksuit pants with white piping down the sides, a stained string-vest and thick gold neck-chains. Such bling was Dean’s most outstanding feature, cheap and nasty though it all looked, especially the sovereign rings on his fingers and diamond studs in his ears.
The irony was that, despite all this, neither of the two lads looked especially menacing.
Calum’s features were rounded and pudgy, with a small nose, a tiny mouth and button-like Teddy Bear eyes. If it hadn’t been for the shaven ginger thatch on his cranium and his various nicks and scars, you could almost have said that he looked soft. Dean, on the other hand, was thin and weasel-like, but closer inspection would reveal that he was wiry rather than bony; he was certainly no weakling. Under his greasy mat of blond locks and between a pair of jug-handle ears, his face was also scarred, his features oddly lopsided, the mouth forever twisted into a weird, lupine grin. Dean didn’t look soft; more like strange.
And yet they swaggered side-by-side through the Saturday night revellers thronging the pavements – the high-heeled, mini-skirted girls, the boys and men in polo-shirts and jeans – and if an alleyway didn’t clear for them, they cleared one for themselves. This only involved pushing and shoving, but it was still early, not yet midnight.
It finally got tastier in the cellar bar at Juicy Lucy’s, where a gold and crimson lightshow filled the crammed, sweaty vault with strobe-like patterns. They knocked back several more beers each, after which Calum decided that the teenager next to him had nudged his drinking-arm once too often. The lad was in the midst of smooching a shapely platinum blonde in the tallest shoes and tiniest, most figure-hugging dress either Calum or Dean had ever seen, but even so he got socked in the side of his kisser, and a real bone-cruncher it was.
Dean guffawed; he could have sworn that the way the blonde tart jerked her head back, he’d filled her mouth with blood and teeth.
At The Place, the door-staff again let them in without a word. They pushed their way through the dizzying throng to the bar. Here, an older guy with iron grey curls, a leather waistcoat over his flowery shirt and a large earring which looked ridiculous on a codger of his age, shouted an order to the barmaid louder than Dean did. So Calum yanked the surprised guy around by his collar and head-butted him, splitting the bridge of his nose crosswise. The guy’s friends, all equally grey-haired and raddle-cheeked, crowded forward belligerently, and so Dean glassed one of them.
This incident looked set to turn into a right old fracas, and another punch was swiftly thrown, but this had nothing whatever to do with Calum or Dean – as usual in Bradburn on a wild session-night, when things kicked off they kicked off generally. It didn’t matter for what reason.
Their next fight, if you could call it that, occurred on the corner of Westgate Street and Audley Way. There was a taxi rank there. Few were queuing yet, most brawling revellers choosing to stay out into the early hours of the morning. That said, one young bloke had hit it too hard too early, and now leaned against the taxi rank pole, being copiously and volubly sick.
Calum and Dean were passing at the time. They were several feet away, but Dean decided that several flecks of puke had spattered his already dingy, beer-stained trousers. So they assaulted the guy together, Dean catching him under the jaw with a roundhouse, Calum kicking his head like a football after he landed on the pavement.
‘Yeeeaaah, bro … goal!’ Dean hooted. ‘Great fucking goal!’
*
Calum and Dean did all these things because they could.
There was no other reason. It gained them nothing except perhaps more notoriety.
But that didn’t matter where Calum and Dean were concerned. It was a very personal thing for these two lads. It was about being who they were – exactly who they were. Expressing themselves in precisely the way they wanted to, with no one else doing anything to stop it.
But eventually even they had to draw the line somewhere. They’d been drinking since lunchtime after all, and were completely sozzled even by their normal standards.
They ambled away from club-land, the Saturday night hubbub fading behind them, the jaunty music gradually losing all definition, dwindling into a dull, distant, repetitive caterwaul.
In the Parish Church yard, they took a minute out.
This was a cut-through between shops and offices during the day, but now it lay quiet under the phosphorescent glow of a single streetlamp, which glimmered eerily on the flagstones where so many epitaphs had once been engraved and yet now were almost indiscernible through age. Bradburn Parish Church dominated the peaceful scene, its innumerable gargoyles jutting out overhead. To the right of it, the so-called Bank Chambers, a row of counting houses, brokerages and solicitors’ offices, led away down an arched passage, the entrance to which was opaque with night-mist.
The sight of that reminded them both, even if only internally, that their bodies were rapidly cooling. Unconsciously, Calum scratched his itchy blubber before pulling his sweater back on. Together, they slumped down onto the War Memorial steps in the middle of the yard, Calum licking at the fresh but stinging notches on his knuckles. Before long, a soft snore issued from Dean’s puckered, spittle-slathered mouth. Dead to the world, he’d tilted back against the orderly lists of heroic names inscribed on brass plaques around the base of the Memorial’s obelisk.
‘Dean!… fuck’s sake!’ Calum nudged him with his elbow. ‘Gi’ us a fucking smoke!’
Dean muttered in response, and slapped at his right hip pocket.
Calum rummaged in there and found a single crooked joint. It was half-smoked already and bent at a right angle. He straightened it out, stuck it between his lips and dug deeper into his friend’s pocket, finding and discarding all kinds of crumby, sticky, manky crap, before retrieving a lighter.
And only then did he become aware that someone was standing in front of him.
Calum glanced up, vision blurring as his eyes tried to focus through the late-night gloom. The newcomer blotted out all light from the single lamp, casting a deep shadow over the lads. But he wasn’t completely in silhouette. Calum could distinguish dark clothing and the bland, bespectacled features of someone he thought he’d spotted a couple of times in the bars earlier.
‘Good evening,’ the newcomer said.
‘Who the fuck are you supposed to be?’ Calum sniggered. ‘Clark fucking Kent?’
‘I’ve got a message for your boss.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Here are my credentials.’ The newcomer jammed a black-gloved hand into his overcoat pocket, but when he brought it out again, it held a wadded rag, which, as he leaned down, he squashed against Calum’s face, using his other hand to clamp the back of Calum’s head, allowing no room at all for manoeuvre.
The young hoodlum tried to struggle, but what remained of his strength and awareness deserted him remarkably quickly.
‘Now, don’t breathe too deeply,’ the man said, lowering him to the ground. ‘I need you conscious again very soon. And you –’ He turned to Dean, who, more through some basic animal instinct than anything else, was trying to shake himself awake. The newcomer reached for something he’d laid against the steps. It was half a pool cue, the slimmer end neatly sawn off. ‘You can have a longer snooze.’
He swung it single-handed. It clattered against the corner of Dean’s skull, sending him half spinning into oblivion, but not entirely.
Dean dropped panting onto his hands and knees, blood spiralling down from his right temple, which suddenly felt as though it had turned to sponge.
‘You, you fuck …’ Dean stammered. ‘You fuck … ’
‘Thick-skulled, eh? Probably should’ve expected that.’
The next blow came two-handed, down and then up, golf club style. THWACK!
Dean twirled over onto his back, head clanging like a bell, hands hanging flipper-like at his sides – in which prone, helpless posture the newcomer kicked him a couple of good ones in the face. But still, somehow, Dean – probably because he was insulated against real pain by his own inebriation – clung to consciousness.
‘You not … not …’ he gurgled bloodily.
‘Thicker than average, eh?’ The newcomer sounded impressed. ‘OK …’
He re-wadded the rag he’d used on Calum, took a small bottle from his coat pocket, unscrewed the cap and tilted it over.
‘… not know … who … we are?’
‘Of course I do.’ The newcomer knelt alongside him. ‘That’s the whole point.’
He crammed the foul-smelling, chemical-soaked pad onto Dean’s broken nose and mangled mouth, and held it there for as long as he needed to.
Chapter 4 (#ucba65687-6d81-5aaa-bfae-7e3115ca0200)
Heck skidded to a halt in the car park behind a line of Brixton shops, his tyres screeching so loud it sent several scrawny pigeons flapping from the surrounding rooftops. He jumped from his silver Megane and trotted up the outside steps to the concrete balcony serving a row of cheap and nasty flats on the upper floor. He hammered on the door to number 3.
Half a minute passed before a dull, muffled voice asked, ‘Yeah … who is it?’
‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg. Open up.’
‘Erm … what do you, erm … what do you want?’
‘Do you want me to shout it at the top of my voice? Because I will.’
‘Erm … hang on.’
‘Never mind “hang on”,’ Heck growled. ‘Open this soddin’, piggin’ door, or I’ll kick it down.’
A chain rattled as it was removed, and the door opened. Penny Flint’s younger brother, Tyler, stood there. He was weedy, pale and with a badly spotted face, particularly around the mouth. He had a mess of dyed-orange hair, and a single earring dangling from an infected lobe. He wore pyjama trousers, dinosaur-feet slippers and a ragged jersey that was three times too large.
‘Thought it’d be you,’ he said dully.
‘Well, obviously.’ Heck shouldered his way inside. ‘No one else knows she’s here. Yet.’
The colour scheme inside the flat was grey, grey and grey, with perhaps a hint of lime-green, which had faded almost to grey. The place was a tip: bare, damp-looking walls, tatty and disordered furniture, dirty crockery and empty beer bottles on a side table. It was cold for an April morning, so the electric fire was on full blast. It was too much really, but it didn’t bother Penny Flint, who was slumped in an armchair and smoking an unfiltered cigarette, focused intently on morning TV, where Jeremy Kyle was putting a bunch of people just like her through their paces. She wore a thin dressing gown, while her long brown hair hung in ratty strands. The ashtray on her armrest was crammed with dog-ends.
In the corner, Alfie, her six-month-old son, lay snug in a rabbit romper suit, burbling to himself in his carry-cot. The baby was the only dab of real colour in the room, aside from Tyler Flint’s ludicrous fake hair. Having checked outside that Heck hadn’t been followed, Tyler had closed and locked the door again and now hovered in the background.
‘Don’t stare at me like that, Heck,’ Penny said without looking round. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘Nervous?’ Heck retorted. ‘You’re lucky I’m not dragging you down to Brixton cop-shop by your knicker-elastic.’
She turned a face on him that had once been pretty but was now haggard.
‘I’m not wearing knickers at the moment, Heck. I can’t stand the pain they cause me. Or maybe I didn’t make that clear enough the last time we spoke.’
If that was true, she was pretty scantily clad, her gown finishing above the knee and her toe- and fingernails painted their trademark shocking-green. There was even a slinky gold chain looped around her left ankle. Her injuries weren’t visible, but Heck had seen the photographs taken at the hospital, and they had spared no anatomical detail. If there was still any doubt, the pair of metal crutches propped against the back of her chair indicated that Penny didn’t even yet figure among the walking wounded. His sympathy for her in this regard hadn’t ebbed. But some things were unforgivable.
‘You realise what you’ve done?’ he asked her quietly.
‘That wasn’t what I intended,’ she said.
‘Intended or not, you tipped off two different police units about John Sagan, and you didn’t have the good grace to warn either of them there were other friendly forces in the field. What did you expect was going to happen?’
‘Look, I just wanted that bastard to go down. Wanted to make sure of it. It’s not my fault if you lot don’t talk to each other.’ She turned back to the TV screen.
‘You deceitful, self-centred cow.’
Her brother ventured forward. ‘Hey, come on. She’s been through –’
‘Sit down, Tyler!’ Heck jabbed a finger at him. ‘Just being who you are and having the life you have is enough for you to worry about. Don’t compound it by getting any more involved than you need to in a shit-storm like this.’
Mouth clamped shut, Tyler sank stiffly onto a chair.
‘It’s all right, Tyle,’ Penny said, with more than a hint of the cocky belligerence which, up until now, had got her through so many years on the streets unscathed. ‘I can handle Heck.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Heck said. ‘What you going to do, set me the same kind of trap you set for Reg Cowling?’
‘I’m sorry ’bout what happened to Cowling. I actually liked him.’
‘I sincerely doubt that, else you wouldn’t have tipped him off about Sagan but at the same time neglected to mention how dangerous the bastard could actually be.’
Penny said nothing. Just focused on the TV screen.
‘You’ve got a sodding nerve,’ Heck added. ‘Blaming us for this. My boss logged our interest in Sagan with the top brass at Organised Crime, and with most of the CID offices in Southeast London. Everyone around here who mattered knew we were watching him. So you decided to go to one of the lower ranks, didn’t you? What was it? Reg Cowling feel his days in National Crime Group were numbered? Perhaps he needed some arrests?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Don’t give me “maybe”, Penny. Cowling was one of your official handlers at Organised Crime, wasn’t he? Don’t bother answering – I know, I checked.’
‘What if he was?’
‘Let me guess … he wanted something off the record? Something he could big himself up with? And you thought, “Bollocks to Heck and SCU. They’re not making things happen fast enough. I’ll tell someone who’ll knock on Sagan’s door straight away.” But if I was a really cynical man, Pen, I’d say it was actually worse than that. I’d say you engineered this fuck-up deliberately. In the knowledge Sagan would run and bullets would fly. And that maybe, in the ensuing gunfight, he’d get zapped – by the police no less, so there’d be no comeback to you.’ He peered down at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. ‘Is that right, or is that right?’
‘How could I have engineered all that, Heck? I’m a tom, not some criminal mastermind.’
‘But you’ve got street-smarts, love. You always have had. And you knew Sagan wouldn’t come without a fight. Just like you knew Cowling and his inexperienced sidekick would do something stupid like go in feet-first. Like you knew we were on the plot, armed … and that we wouldn’t just stand by.’
‘And still you couldn’t take him,’ she sneered. ‘Two different teams and you both missed him.’
Heck shook his head. ‘You know, Pen, I wish I lived in your world. Where real shithouse behaviour is measured only by the bloody inconvenience it might cause you. Not by guilt, or remorse, or regret …’
She glanced round at him again, wryly amused. ‘You don’t wish you lived in my world, Heck. You’re quite happy in your own. Where you can go home at night and leave all this stuff behind you. Where if anything does go wrong, you’ve got an entire army one radio-call away. You really think it would satisfy me to see John Sagan in jail, in relative comfort, while me and Alfie are living on hand-outs, and the one thing that’s ever earned me anything has turned to putty?’
‘That was the deal we made.’
‘Then more fool you.’ She turned back to the television. ‘Like I’d settle for seeing Sagan get life when the alternative was getting him shot down on the street like the dog he is?’ Her smile grew tighter, thinner. ‘At least that way I’d keep my respect.’
‘Even more so if a few coppers died too, eh?’
‘Like I say, Heck, that wasn’t the plan. But if you need to take a positive from it …’
‘The positive is seeing you for the conniving little mare you are. For your info, I’m having you scrubbed off the grass register!’
She turned again. The sneering smile had faded.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Heck said. ‘I’m gonna drive you into a normal, everyday life if it kills me. And to do that, I first need to ensure that no copper in Greater London ever makes the mistake of using you as an official informant again.’
‘Well … cool. I lose half my income in one fell swoop, and now you’re taking the other half too.’
‘Try getting a proper job … you need to do that anyway if you’re gonna bring that kid up decently.’ Heck’s mobile chirped in his pocket. He checked it and saw a text from Gemma.
Shawna’s come round. Meet at KCH
‘Me – sat on a supermarket till!’ Penny scoffed. ‘You having a laugh, or what?’
‘It could be worse.’ Heck headed for the door. ‘You could be lying on an intensive care bed, like a very good friend of mine.’
